Don Arney’s creative approach to solving problems has resulted in a series of products sold throughout the world. He is based on the west coast of Canada near Vancouver Island.

Invented by Don Arney in 1982, the Bambi Bucket The Bambi Bucket reinvented aerial firefighting for helicopters with its full collapsibility and accurate water drops! Globally, the Bambi Bucket brand is known among firefighting agencies and has become synonymous with aerial firefighting. It is now used in more than 115 countries around the world by more than 1,000 helicopter operators. Read More →

This video, produced by the NIHF, features Don Arney telling the story of how he invented the Bambi Bucket. Filmed from his beautiful home on Salt Spring Island, Don talks about mining the mind for ideas at deeper levels, a process he credits to his practice of Transcendental Meditation. Read More →

COAST CONNECTIONS - Fighting Wildfires with Don Arney

Coast Connections host Elizabeth Heinz and guest Don Arney, Inventor of the Bambi Bucket sit down to talk about how this big orange bucket became a brand name synonymous with helicopter firefighting not only in British Columbia but worldwide.

Monday, October 2nd, is the 33rd anniversary of the issue of a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office covering a technology which continues to play a great role in dousing the flames of major infernos.

This summer, while Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria pummeled Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean, one of the worst wildfire seasons ever ravaged over 10 million acres across the western United States and Canada. Fortunately, an ingenious invention called the Bambi Bucket® is helping first-responders and the National Guard battle wildland fires from the sky.

Before 1980’s fighting forest fires with helicopters was a hassle. The huge rigid containers hanging down from the hooks slowed down helicopters on their way to the site. The complicated trap doors of these buckets often stopped working. Luckily, one day, the inventor Don Arney had an insight that changed the game.

Salt Spring Island entrepreneur Don Arney has been a big-dream inventor since childhood. One of his earliest ideas was for a blimp/airplane hybrid and while still just 12, he drew up a proposal and sent it to the president of the Avro Canada aviation company.

Recognition of a phenomenal invention that transformed the world of aerial firefighting and a company that continues to create and contribute on a global scale has earned Don Arney the honour of being a 2017 inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

It was originally meant to fight forest fires, but an innovation from a B.C.-based company is being used by the Japanese military to douse water on the country's dangerously overheated nuclear reactors.